Stop me if you've heard this one before...
So this engineer is working on scientific machinery back in the 1930s, and starts thinking about automated microform storage systems. So he starts imagining and sketching and comes up with an idea for an office desk of sorts.
Not just any desk, a desk with a built-in panel of input and control switches, a display screen, and spools upon spools of microfilm stored within.
and what did these spools of microfilm store? I hear you asking. According to the engineer, it would hold all of a person's books, communications, and records, all in an easy to navigate and access system, to serve as a supplemental memory.
As a result of these devices which he named "the memex", the engineer predicted "wholly new forms of encyclopedias will appear, ready made with a mesh of associative trails running through them, ready to be dropped into the memex and there amplified."
Why do I mention this engineer? because every time any one of us sits down to a library database terminal, or consults wikipedia, or even browses the internet, we are using Vannevar Bush's memex. The future is now (even without flying cars). Interestingly, Bush was never a librarian nor was he associated with an LIS school. Yet his landmark essay "As we may think" published in Atlantic Monthly back in 1945 has become part of most library schools' introductory classes, when they start to look at the history of the field. Every course on digital librarianship has its roots in the memex and Vannevar Bush's ideas.
Makes me wonder what devices are being proposed as today's revolutionary technology, that'll slide sideways into the fundamentals of tomorrow's society. Here's to the music of what happens.
Not just any desk, a desk with a built-in panel of input and control switches, a display screen, and spools upon spools of microfilm stored within.
and what did these spools of microfilm store? I hear you asking. According to the engineer, it would hold all of a person's books, communications, and records, all in an easy to navigate and access system, to serve as a supplemental memory.
As a result of these devices which he named "the memex", the engineer predicted "wholly new forms of encyclopedias will appear, ready made with a mesh of associative trails running through them, ready to be dropped into the memex and there amplified."
Why do I mention this engineer? because every time any one of us sits down to a library database terminal, or consults wikipedia, or even browses the internet, we are using Vannevar Bush's memex. The future is now (even without flying cars). Interestingly, Bush was never a librarian nor was he associated with an LIS school. Yet his landmark essay "As we may think" published in Atlantic Monthly back in 1945 has become part of most library schools' introductory classes, when they start to look at the history of the field. Every course on digital librarianship has its roots in the memex and Vannevar Bush's ideas.
Makes me wonder what devices are being proposed as today's revolutionary technology, that'll slide sideways into the fundamentals of tomorrow's society. Here's to the music of what happens.